seemed to hate me. The family likeness could not but be observed. Perhaps I was rather the better looking of the two. He may have felt that. I do not know whether anybody had made the observation to him. For the rest of the world the fact of likeness was fixed by a clever sketch, for which I was called upon to sit to one of ours. Strathspey was represented with his back to the observer, his face directed to a looking-glass. In the glass my head and fore-paws were distinctly shown. Under the sketch, as it was handed about, was written the wise man's acute apothegm, "Know thyself!"

In a short time, not only in the messroom, among the servants, and the men, but in society generally, the names, "Strathspey," "Tuftie," and "The Marquis," were so indiscriminately used in allusion to both of us, that it was often difficult to know which of us was intended. I do not know whether he ever mistook the person really intended. I did. Whether in my absence he ever answered to the appellative, "Tuftie," of course I cannot say. In his presence I know that when he has been appealed to as "Marquis," or "Strathspey," I obviously answered as though I was called. I remember a simple but very natural incident which seemed to give him considerable annoyance. It happened that one day he had called for a broiled bone. Nearly at the same time the messman had orders to provide me with a biscuit. There was some mistake somewhere. The biscuit came up devilled and the bone raw, an arrangement that suited neither of us. Other mistakes of this kind were constantly occurring. I frequently heard them told confidentially as good things that happened last night. One of these occurs to my memory at this moment. The O'Mormon, of ours, was asking the Countess of Dash to dance. "No," says she, “O'Mormon, you must wait a wee; I'm going to waltz with Tuftie." She did not know that the Marquis was at her elbow to claim the engagement.

It was an accident of this kind which at last brought matters to an issue between Strathspey and myself. There was a very sweet, pretty, clever girl, with whom all of them were flirting. One evening she happened to say to my master, "Mr. Fynch, I insist upon it that you must bring the Marquis to sit to me. It's of no use having him by himself; you only can keep him in good order; yet with his natural, animated expression "- Lord Strathspey overheard this by accident, and was rather gratified; he, in fact, was on the point of coming forward to promise that he would be very good, when the appeal to Mr. Fynch ended, "I do assure you Mamma has no objection to dogs in the drawing-room." This wrought Strathspey's jealousy to a positive frenzy. It was reported to me that he had even said in his anger

he "would give a fiver to any one who would hang or poison that dog of Fynch's." I could not believe that he had really uttered such a murderous wish; but with the fate of Thomas à Becket in memory, I confess I did not know what effect such a reported bidding for my death might have upon some Fitzurse or De Tracy of the nineteenth century. I felt that either he must leave the regiment or I must. Could the question which should go have been ballotted in the mess, I think it would have gone against Strathspey. I considered, however, that he had some rights by reason of his prior appointment. I am, therefore, here, waiting for an exchange.

(To be continued.)

at least two little historiettes, which I then heard. I will give them as nearly as I can in the words of the speakers.

TUFTIE'S HISTORY.

If I had to begin life again with a choice of introduction, I hardly know whether I should better myself by altering that which fate gave me. But there was a period when I thought otherwise. I had scarcely begun to be self-conscious, before I accused the world of injury. It went hard with me that I was not soured into a mere clever dog, an adventurer, a philosopher, nothing better than one of those men whose sole business in life seems to be the work of relieving their fellow-Christians of the tedium of Sunday, either as fashionable preachers or writers of smart articles in a Saturday paper. If I were to ask our new friend here how Cosmo Bygrave got through a day in which public opinion did not allow him to hunt or shoot, I know he would say, "By the help of that piquant publication which was the burden of the post-bag on Sunday morning." It kept him up to the proper views and tone of the day. It saved him from the bore of reading the Times, to say nothing of anything like a book; and yet no doubt, like others of his class, he was pretty well omniscient-he had the proper opinion on every man and thing. And yet this could only be effected by hard work somewhere. It is a grand result of the proper distribution of labour when a man who has nothing to do but receive and spend an income, a man who could not earn a shilling a day at anything, can for a single sixpence a week be provided with universal information. What cared he for the men who worked hard all the week to provide his Sunday diet? They were no more to him than the people who killed his mutton or attended to his horse. Nor to me. I beg pardon for the digression. I had had just enough taste of adversity to give me a true relish for Fortune when she did me justice. The sense of wrong and unmerited dishonour rather acted as a spur upon me. I determined to put forth all my energies, to profit by all occasions for winning and being worthy of that high place in the social scale of which I felt that only misfortune had robbed me. I say "robbed " in its literal sense. I was villanously robbed of my birthright, my pedigree, and the means of tracing it; born amongst the nobodies; disinherited of those distinctions, that value, those conveniences, which would have been my portion had I been littered where I ought to have been. I know that many young men indulge the same fancies about themselves. There is not a draper's assistant who does not feel that it is quite a mistake that he was not

But

born to be an idle gentleman, with so much a year-so many hundreds, or so many thousands, he has not determined which. But my claims are not the mere creation of my own vanity. My misfortune was a robbery; yes, a felony. In a word, I am sure that shortly before my birth my dear mother was stolen. Thus it happened that I was dropped into the world beneath a scissorsgrinder's barrow. I will frankly own that my ideas of my mother are rather derived from imagination than from memory. Alas! I was early separated from her, too soon for me to learn those circumstances which would have been most interesting to me, my distinctive name and family; which I need not tell you must be Scottish. true blood is not with us, as it is with men, a mere whimsical conventionality that requires a perpetual chain of testimony to make its title good. Let the washerwoman's son be slipped early into a marquis's cradle, and in due time he will make as good a duke as the best, while my young marquis at ten years old is bird-keeping for sixpence a day; who is to know that his mother was a duchess? If a baronet's heir is missing, and a man steps up and says, "I was the boy who ran away five-and-twenty years ago," what has he about him to distinguish him from the son of an attorney? It is not so with dogs. But besides the form and features of a dog of high family, I early felt in myself all the characteristics of high caste dogs. Were they contemptuous towards their betters? So was I. Were they affable, haughty, quarrelsome, whimsical by turns to equals and inferiors? So was I. Were they sensitive of their honour? So was I; remarkably so. When they happened to be kicked in mind or in body, and could not help themselves, were they sulky over it? So was I. Were they fond of field sports? So was I; especially of rat-catching. My blood was not hidden. A sporting farmer was the first to detect it. I am ashamed to mention the sum he gave for me. He chuckled over his bargain. He boasted of his acquisition. The dog-stealers heard of it, and removed me to the University. For the modest sum of six guineas, I became the companion of a young gentleman who was studying the "Racing Calendar" at Brasenose. College, however, is not a very pleasant place for dogs. There are a class of men, clothed with a little brief authority, and familiarly (I thought rather too familiarly) called "fellows," who appeared to make it their special business to make our lives uneasy. I was put into many humiliating positions to avoid the observation of these gentry in going in and out of the college gates; for these people, while, with scrupulous attention to my master's morals, they required him to live within the walls, with no regard at all to mine, insisted

Is there any law upon the Statute Book authorising a man to treat his wife as a villein, and, of course, as a villein, to give a colour of legality to her sale? The question itself will, I know, make the hair of Miss Becker and Mr. Stuart Mill stand on end; and it is not, I admit, a very gallant one to ask. But I ask it strictly and purely in the interest of historical accuracy. As a matter of fact the custom exists, and exists to-day as it existed in the days of the Plantagenets. The only difference is that the custom is now confined to the lower classes, and that in the days of the Plantagenets it was confined to Knights of the Holy Sepulchre. A Somerset gentleman, Mr. Bond, of Pendomer (a pleasant little village on the London and South Western Railway, possessing one of the oldest churches in the west), recently turned up a deed executed in the time of the Edwards, under which Sir John Clamoys transferred his wife to a friend, who had taken a fancy to her, for the price of an old song. The circumstances of the case were somewhat complicated, and the complications led to a lawsuit; but, so far as I can ascertain, the decision of the courts upon the validity of the sale is not now to be traced. Lord Painhill was the gentleman who purchased Lady Clamoys from Sir John in order to protect her against a charge of unfaithfulness; and in the deed of purchase the lady was entered exactly as stock might have been. Sir John de Dinnmer married Lord Painhill's sister, and afterwards challenged the right of his nephew, Lord Painhill's eldest son, to the estates, on the ground, I presume, that the deed of sale was null and that Lord Painhill's son was the son of a concubine. Is it possible to trace out the decision of the courts upon this suit? Mr. Bond ought to publish the deed. It will form an interesting contribution to our historical literature. But taking the plain fact simply as it stands, it proves that the custom which is still in existence of selling a wife like a horse is not an invention of our own. It is at least as old as chain mail, probably very much older, and will well bear investigation.

"You begin!" What an amount of moral cowardice this expression of ours covers! Here this summer we have all been muttering anything but benedictions upon the weather, and through the weather upon the black coats and chimney-pot hats and all the et ceteras of our English costume, wondering why we cannot wear a cool and pleasant dress like that of our Scottish kinsmen in the Highlands, or perhaps like that of the cricketers at Lord's, or something light and refreshing in the form of a